was an earth-bound human being, like the rest of us as his mind wondered through the limitless cosmos. you can keep up to date with the news and developments plus all the sport on our website. the address aljazeera.com. new york. it set off a glass half empty or full debate. it is worrisome, a loss of important gains or do we look at those rises in the context of some of the lowest levels of sustained crime in dates?

safety in numbers, it's the "inside story." welcome to snoird "inside story." inside story." i'm ray suarez. what many people see as violent police overreaction has led to demonstrations and confrontations with police and some uniformed leaders complaining they aren't getting enough support. there's also been a small but steady rise in some crime numbers of. after decades of steady movement in the other direction. america's cities are safer today than they were ten, 20 and 30 years ago. how should we understand the recent measured increases? a statistical blip or a worrying sign that the solid success in lowering crime may have been just temporary. al jazeera's courtney kealy

reports. >> reporter: baltimore had its most violent month in 40 years. chicago saw 12 homicides over the memorial day weekend. crime has risen 20% in new york this year compared to 2014. >> this is all hands on deck. all hands every single resource, every single body. every single personnel on the streets of baltimore. >> reporter: the 43 killings in baltimore in may followed the death of freddy gray which triggered peaceful protests but also riots. in chicago, many point to the flow of guns from other states as a significant factor. in new york there have been 135 homicides through end of may. up from 113 in the same period last year. >> there has been obviously an uptick in shootings. it is something we take very very seriously. it is something we are addressing right now.

>> mayor bill deblasio is under fire for eliminating stop and frisk as a way to eliminate crime. >> a lot of people want stop and frisk. >> tony brown. >> do you think he he's -- >> totally totally. they all have this mentality that we are going to approach this from a hip sister liberal point. >> police point out that much of the violence comes on gang on gang violence like brownsville and brooklyn. >> police say they have different beliefs on policing techniques, they would like better integration to policing into the community. >> when it cops to stop and frisk it doesn't make it go away because you come to people and arrest them and want to lock them up or ask for i.d.

it doesn't change anything. brownsville has always been like this. because we have 20,000 police here it wouldn't stop it. >> local residents point to the lack of opportunity as the main reason for the previously of prevention prevalence of gangs . >> summer months when crime spikes the highest patrolling new york city streets. the murder rate among the 5815 largest cities in the u.s. is down, and considering in 2014 there were 319 killings. in 1990, there were more than 2200. courtney kealy, al jazeera. >> alex vitale

is a professor of be sociology and criminology. welcome professor. found that crime was up in new york and blamed it on recent political policies from the mayor of new york and a bad relationship with the police. what do you make of that ? >> well, first of all it's not fair to say crime is up. crime is only up in a very small number of categories. now of course homicide is the most important category for most people and so that has to be taken seriously. but the overall trend in new york and nationally, is still downward. the other thing is it is intellectually dishonest to start drawing conclusions from two or three maybe 74 months of data. if we're going to make those

very short term calculations then we might want to look at the three week slow down by police recently in new york that was accompanied by a significant drop in crime. i didn't want to draw any conclusions from that and i don't think we're ready to draw those kinds of conclusions from a few months of slightly increased murder rates. >> but american cities as you well know are pretty sensitive ecosystems when it comes to these kinds of things. when a couple of murders happen over a weekend, people wonder, what's happening? is the place where i commute where i eat, where i shop, more dangerous, with homicides up does it really matter if other kinds of crimes like breaking into cars, breaking into apartments are down ? >> it certainly matters and we need to adopt strategies to help that but heather mcdonald's

conclusions was this is a result of police refusing to do their job because they think they'll get into trouble is actually an insult to police and draws the wrong conclusions. there was really a broad trend towards lawlessness we would see an increase in burglary, robbery and larceny. instead those are all going down. we need to look at specifically what is going on with the use of guns in the handful of communities across the country and i think that's as much a political question as it is a policing chemical weapon. >> you talk about an insult to police. hasn't this last year been a difficult one, in community police relations, in a number of cities? >> absolutely. but then to draw the conclusion that therefore, the police are refusing to you know take their job seriously and are like we'll just let the public stew in

their own violence, i think does a disservice to the hundreds of thousands of hardworking police officers out there, who i don't think are just disregarding these problems. they're out there working hard. the question is whether or not these are problems that can be solved just through policing initiatives. i think we have to ask some tough questions about political leaders about the conditions in these communities that create these pockets of violence that remain very stubbornly in place in the context of much broader crime reductions. >> you know the mayor mentioned in his recent news conference on the crime level, mayor deblasio of new york that police manpower was actually being freed up by the drops in crime in many neighborhoods which would allow the nypd to concentrate more manpower hours on the street in those neighborhoods that we're talking about that were bearing the heaviest burden of crime.

a good approach? >> well i think it's certainly true that both the reductions in crime and the dialing-back of some of the motion invasive police practices like stop-and-frisk have freed up some police resources and i for one thing think it's a mistake and the mayor agrees with me on this that we should be hiring more police as some have called for. we should think about how to use police smartly but also, how to address these problems that don't rely on just the very limited tools that the police have for addressing you know why are young people picking up guns in the first place? what is the demand for guns driven by? it's very hard for the police to get at that. they can deal with the supply side. catching people with guns, trying to stop the dealing in guns. and so i think that the mayor, here in new york and mayors in some other cities, have taken some important steps in looking

at ways of dealing with these young people who are so disproportionately involved with the shootings, to try to figure out you mo what's driving them into this behavior, and thinking about pathways out of that kind of offending. >> very quickly before we go professor, the mayor quite controversially to police officers earneded stop-and-frisk now leaders of the police benevolent association, the officers union are saying this rise in shooting is directly connected to the end of stop-and-frisk. >> that can't possibly be true. even the commissioner has said look the highest year for stop-and-frisk activity was 2011 and crime is down dramatically even from then. even as the number of stop-and-frisk dropped over the last period crime has continued to drop.

in fact 2011 was a bad year representative to the overall trend. and again the time horizons are just tao short to draw that kind of conclusion. >> alex vitale, thanks for joining us. during the 1990s when violence crime was dropping in communities accreditation the country, local news coverage of violent crime and people's impressions that they were in danger both rose. places of safety and danger, accurately calibrated with actual risk and if the two are out of sync, what does that have on politics and the power given opolice? stay with us. it's "inside story."

>> best selling author james patterson >> i don't work for a living it's play for me >> his rise to fame and fortune... >> the was a lot of luck involved. >> engaging a younger audience. >> a lot of kids don't think reading books is cool... >> and why novels are a key to success. >> education is the future of the economy. >> every tuesday night. >> i lived that character. >> go one on one with america's movers and shakers. >> we will be able to see change. >> gripping. inspiring. entertaining. talk to al jazeera. only on al jazeera america.

tonight's topic safety in numbers, we're looking at rising crime, public confront stations with police and public concept of crime. katherine pew, a maryland state pugh. a maryland state senator. baltimore just had the most dangerous month in 40 years. what's going on? >> when conditions exist in certain communities it also breeds criminal behavior. i think you're talking about neighborhoods that have been ignored for a number of years and conditions that exist for a number of years and you're talking about problems and the way we do certain things in our city whether it's drug treatment and the number of issues that

have remained in terms of poverty and neighborhoods that haven't been touched since the 1960s. >> i would be the last to deny that any of that is but 1962 when those problems were being ignored and 2011 when those things weric in order was there a spark? a proximate incident? >> when you talk about riots and those kinds of things, they say riots are really the language of those who feel like they're not being heard. and i think with the advent of drugs, social media, drug treatment in the middle of some neighborhoods that don't exist in other neighborhoods, perpetrate and perpetuate the

things you are seeing here . -- perpetrate and perpetuate the away you see here. the attention has not been drawn to them and we've not looked at how we solve the problems of those individuals who live in those communities, those who are exiting our institutions, who you know recidivism rates are very high in most communities most neighborhoods and we have not even dealt with the mass incarceration . >> tony, when we look at your home town brooklyn it is in many, many ways much safer tan it was even 40 more years ago. yet the shootings and killings are concentrated in the same neighborhoods in many cases that they were back then. >> yeah.

you know and i have to cosign with the senator with regards to that. the same issues related to with regards to the recidivism rate individuals who are incarcerated on bogus charges several years ago are now coming out and there's nothing for them yet immigrated into the gang land style within the prisons bringing that element out and incorporating the young people and getting them involved. that contributes to the uptick we call not in only just brooklyn but the bronx queens manhath afternoon. i'mmanhattan. i'm going from here to a press conference about a person being shot. the senator's point. >> arguably, yet the tensions are highest between police department and members of the community who don't feel they're being respected.

who don't feel the real causes of the violence on the streets are being addressed by simply more blue. >> you know what it is? it is a lack of communication on a lot of different levels. there has to be real leadership to drive that dynamic. if our elected officials per se are not as effective for most part in communicating the message that we all have to work together then apparently you're going to get that. you are going to get that dissension for individuals who don't feel they have that authority, there's nobody communicating the message that you have the follow guidelines you have to follow the rules. some people step out of that realm, put themselves in a position of not being knowledgeable of the rules think i can commit a crime and i'm not going to get caught. and i blame this not only the institutionalized system of politics, but who don't stand upper for who they are or who

they were sworn to. >> senator, what do you see about the community that need the police the most and resent them the most? >> i just f hairnted all of inherited a lot of the downtown winchester, i leave the city one way, i come back into just as a reminder of the amount of neglect, when you talk about mass incarceration incarceration, you are developing training programs that don't allow them to sustain a real -- a life, you don't -- they can't take care of them they can't take care of their families and so they turn to crime. what is it we should be doing that allows these individuals to come back into our communities to create a better lifestyle and then look at how we're doing

drug treatment in most of these neighborhoods. they don't exist in most of these affluent neighborhoods, in ashburg or some of our affluent communities but we let certain communities be throw away communities, where we do drug treatment. i believe police want to do their jobs but you don't expect police to go inside someone's home and say do you have a gun? are you going to shoot somebody? >> after the break, is perception a lag ugh indicator, where crime is a lead being leading indicator, what are the police spoafs

supposed to be an indicator? tonight's "inside story."

i'm ray suarez. crime statistics are rarely uniform across a city, some places are inevitably safer than others. but part of the political equation that some of the neighborhoods that squawk the loudest about rising crime are the safest places to live. but people there feel rising concern, while the crime is being carried out elsewhere. tony herbert and katherine pugh are still with me. tony, suggesting that new york is a more dangerous place, is it? >> i mean it's scary, i mean quite frankly. we've celebrated a number of years where there was just

really no crime to a large degree, that you would have to be concerned about walking out at night. and all of a sudden this uptick and surge of guns going off and blaring at will. it does make for a scary time in our city. i sort of liken it to the process of there's been some communication loss with this administration. i just don't think they get it. the essence of working with community helps to afford an opportunity for us to be able to work together to stave off this kind of genocide, we call it, a modern day genocide, we've got one-year-olds and four-year-olds getting shot and it's ridiculous. and i have to stay with that. if we had responsible leadership, responsible electeds like senator pugh here in new york, be we would have a better way of communicating with someone who wants to work with the community and not take it for granted.

>> senator, what do we do with a community where crime is up and it's more dangerous? >> i think you can't deny there's a problem, you've got to look at the issues head on, the number of individuals coming back into your institutions. whenever a statistic about your city is reported on the news, i don't care where you live in that city you're going to feel in some way impacted by that violence. whether it is in your particular neighborhood or not. we've got to create programs that again lead to people being able to have productive lives. we have got to educate young people that criminal activity is not the way.there are young people in our society that believe living past 24 is old. >> but is baltimore tainted in a way that hurts the efforts to put it back together? >> no, i think leadership has to lead.

stand up speak up speak out. i'm involved in a committee looking at how we need the police reform in our communities but at the same time what are we doing about those neighborhoods that have been neglected for decades, where are the expungement programs where are the job training programs and the places for individuals coming out of institutions? i passed a bill creating opportunities for ex-offenders because i believe that is a better way than a job training program that leads to a $10 an hour job that doesn't allow you to support your families. i think we need to look at an individual who has the ability to be productive. put the resources into the communities and you can't have boarded up houses for decades and feel you are going to have an effective community. people don't feel they're being respected. i don't condone violence but riots are the language of people who don't feel they're being heard. people are protesting because of

the neglect and the attention that has not been paid to these communities and it is the responsibility of leadership elected officials, the business community to come up with a plan that moves the community forward. we can't neglect neighborhoods year after year after year and decade after decade. >> and most importantly senator, parents have to be involved as well. i'd be honored to come -- >> go ahead and finish. >> i'd be honored to come to baltimore and talk with you and the mayor. >> we have had decades of children raising children. >> tony, peace is contagious isn't it, can a neighborhood build up in a year? >> i think there's a lot of opportunity to have relationships. i'm meeting to have conversation

and we're promoting a whole concept called the one family one community initiative, that engaging relationships fraternal and clergy, and we're all coming together in a way to approach in a village perspective. coming to baltimore having a conversation with folks down there we are honored with that opportunity as well. >> tony, state senator katherine pugh and tony herbert. i'm be back on the ironies of law and order and safer neighborhoods. stay with us. >> the new al jazeera america primetime. get the real news you've been looking for. >> now everybody in this country

can hear them. >> at 7:00, a thorough wrap-up of the day's events. >> at the end of the day we're going to give you an intelligent, context driven, take on the day's news. >> then at 8:00, john seigenthaler digs deeper into the stories of the day. >> this is a complicated situation, how significant is it? >> and at 9:00, get a global perspective on the news. >> sending their government a message. >> organizing themselves. >> people say they're finally fed up. >> weeknights on al jazeera america primetime.

and the reporting that allows you to make sense of your world. >> ali velshi on target only on al jazeera america three biggest cities and during the years i worked in new york los angeles and chicago they were increasingly dangerous places but i always found that the people that had the most accurate idea of their relative vulnerability to crime were the people who lived in the most dangerous neighborhoods. they had to calculate risk to life to property in an

atmosphere of real instead of imagined danger. yet those people were not the most politically poet end influential citizens. people who had that clout, people would listen to them but their feelings were exaggerated, and the most high profile crime in which the victim was for want of better words someone like us. new york remains what it was in 2013, in 2011 and for years before that. the safest big city in america. and it's more than reasonable to want to maintain that distinction. doing that would benefit from honesty about how much crime there is in relative terms, and who the victims really are. thanks to joining us for "inside story." we'll see you next time. i'm ray suarez.

announcer: this is al jazeera. hello there, welcome to the newshour, i'm shiulie ghosh in doha. coming up in the next 60 minutes - hope for greece. both athens in the e.u. ais debt deal could be around the corner president recep tayyip erdogan makes a speech since his ruling party lost their overall majority changes goods for sex. over 400 instances of abuse